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Which car parts could you do without?

There was a story in the news recently about a guy who got stopped by police driving a “skeleton car”.

It seems that he was driving it to the scrap yard to sell it but had decided to take off the doors, bonnet, lights and mirrors first of all, to sell them separately. This got me thinking about what car parts I would be happy driving without.

The Mirrors

I have to confess that every time I am tempted to carry out a manoeuvre with a look at the mirror I see my old driving instructor’s severe face floating up at me like a ghostly apparition. “Mirror signal manoeuvre, young man, mirror signal manoeuvre” she will say in her best chastising voice. If I tried to drive a vehicle with no mirrors she would haunt me for the rest of my life, I fear.

The Doors

The idea of using a car without doors is rather charming, isn’t it? Actually when I was younger I would have loved to have had a car like the General Lee in the Dukes of Hazzard. It had doors but the achingly cool Duke boys used to jump in through the open window instead of opening them. These days I can’t really imagine myself jumping in through the window anymore than I can imagine myself jumping over a river in order to get away from that pesky Boss Hogg. To go back to the original question; I guess I could drive without any doors but wouldn’t it get a bit chilly?

The Turn Signal Lights

The same fear of a driving instructor I haven’t seen in 20 years would stop me from using a car without turn signal lights as well. Having said that, I have been driving in South America for a while and here they don’t really use their turn lights. Instead, they stick out their arms to indicate turns, just like our hero in the scrap car did. I always feel giddily rebellious when I do this but I can’t imagine doing it on the UK’s roads.

About Robert Bell

Robert Bell is a regular contributor to the First Vehicle Leasing Blog. He moved from the UK to South America in order to save the rainforest and ended up staying there. He drives a very old Toyota Hi-Lux which he just can't bear to change.